The guide will allow you to see "at-a-glance" what is included with each of these versions of QuickBooks and how some of these key features vary across the products.

Even better! I've included some "insider insights" relating to many of these differences so you have some expert knowledge behind you as you evaluate which version of QuickBooks is best for your business.

Remember - if you need more than 5 users in QuickBooks, that requirement automatically puts you in the Enterprise version, as Pro and Premier can only have up to 5 users at any one time.

I have intentionally left several versions out of this guide as those versions have some significant limitations to them (Simple Start - for extremely small businesses; Mac - can only have one user at a time; Online Edition - doesn't have a full feature set)

The Pro and Premier data files are interchangeable as long as they are from the same year (i.e. Pro/Premier 2011). If not, they can't be opened in the other version. My guess is that is what is happening here.

Can someone with a pro version of quick books back up
a premier version? Somone with a pro version is
trying to get tax info from a premier version and she
says it doesn't load into her systgem. Is there a
way to do this?

i have Quickbooks Premium 2010 and has a small company engaged in distribution of a product to 200 retailers. I have two (2) company-owned retail stores as well which i want to integrate in my quickbook's single company account. how do i setup my two retail outlet's deliveries & sales transactions in my quickbooks proram?

I have Quickbooks 2005 Premier contractor version and I'm looking up upgrade to the 2010 software. Do I need to buy the premier upgrade to keep all of my account lists, items, etc.? Or can I go with a cheaper version. I'm worried about losing all of the customized accounts that I've created over the years

I have never heard of any restrictions like the one you have mentioned here, nor have I seen this type of error message having worked with QuickBooks for the last 10 years. If it exists, it has sure remained hidden from me.

Businesses cycle out computers all the time, so the idea of uninstalling the license from computer A and reinstalling it on computer B is a routine process.

However, a true read of the licensing indicates that you need to have a separate license for each computer that QB is installed on. In your example, if you had 12 computers with QB installed, you're supposed to have 12 licenses. Naturally, if you've junked 7 of those computers, you would have uninstalled QuickBooks from them to "free up" those licenses. Premier then only allows you to have 5 of these 12 connected together at any one time.

The limit of having 5 users in QB Premier at any time is a completely separate limit than the licensing issue.

The limit of 5 users remains in QB Pro and Premier 2010. If you need more than 5, QB Enterprise allows up to 30 at the same time.

Does QB have a limit on the number of times it can be installed on different computers (like say it's on 12 different computers, some of which have been taken out of service, and we are just using it concurrently for 5 people.

One of our pseudo-IT people here tells me that QB (Premier 2006) CANNOT be installed on any more machines and that I will get an error message to that effect if / when I attempt to install it on a new laptop that is going to replace my old desktop...

Even better! I've included some "insider insights" relating to many of these differences so you have some expert knowledge behind you as you evaluate which version of QuickBooks is best for your business.